[1]D. A. Carson, “Recent Developments in the Doctrine of
Scripture,” in Collected Writings on Scripture (Wheaton. IL: Crossway,
2010), 62. Carson is commenting on one of the main points in Martin Marty’s
article, “Tensions within Contemporary Evangelicalism: A Critical Appraisal,”
in The Evangelicals, ed. David F. Wells and John D. Woodbridge
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1975), 170-88. [2]Carson, “Recent
Developments,” 62. [3]J. Barton Payne, “Apeitheo:
Current Resistant to Biblical Inerrancy,” in Evangelicals and

[5]R. Albert Mohler
notes two other indicators that a split was forming among evangelicals over
inerrancy. The first was a book written in 1957 by Gabriel Herbert in
which he “accused British evangelicals of holding, in effect, to a view of
scriptural truth and authority that is tantamount to idolatry. He rejected
not only inerrancy but also any affirmation, however, qualified, of the Bible’s
total truthfulness.” R. Albert Mohler, “When the Bible Speaks, God Speaks: The
Classic Doctrine of Biblical Authority,” in Five Views on Biblical Authority (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 33. Mohler is referring to Gabriel Herbert,Fundamentalism
and the Church of God (London: SCM Press, 1957). J. I. Packer
responded with Fundamentalism and the Word of God in which he defended
the wholesale truthfulness of the Bible. See J. I. Packer, Fundamentalism and
the Word of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958). The second indicator was a
meeting of evangelical leaders in 1966 in Wenham, Massachusetts where “it became
clear that at least some evangelical scholars present had serious reservations
about inerrancy” (Mohler, “When the Bible Speaks,” 32). [6]Dewey Beegle, The
Inspiration of Scripture (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), 165-68.

[8]Dewey Beegle, Scripture,
Tradition, and Infallibility (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1973), 175-97.
This book was the revised edition to The Inspiration of Scripture,
published in 1973 under a slightly different name. In the foreword to the
revised edition, F. F. Bruce located Beegle’s first edition, The Inspiration
of Scripture within the evangelical tradition, although he admits that
Beegle had broadened his potential audience with the second edition. See
F. F. Bruce, foreword to Scripture, Tradition, and Infallibility, 7.
[9]Gordon H. Clark, “Beegle on the Bible: A Review Article,” JETS 20
(1977): 265. [10]In 1984, Packer
recognized three primary precursors to the inerrancy debate. “The direct
antecedents of the current evangelical debate were: (1) Dewey M. Beegle’s book,The
Inspiration of Scripture (1963, enlarged and reissued as Scripture,
Tradition, and Infallibility, 1973), an attack by a professed evangelical on
the idea of inerrancy, (2) the view that Scripture taught (and the use of it
modeled) in some professedly evangelical seminaries during the sixties and
seventies, and (3) Harold Lindsell’s strident, Battle for the Bible (1976),
the first blast of his trumpet against what he saw as the monstrous regiment of
biblical errantists in the modern evangelical world.” J. I. Packer, “John Calvin
and the Inerrancy of Scripture,” in Inerrancy and the Church, ed. John D.
Hannah (Chicago: Moody, 1984), 145.

[19]Ibid., 214.
The fall of Princeton, along with other schools that, in the past, did not
regard inerrancy as a test of orthodoxy and who had also fallen headlong into
liberalism (e.g., Harvard University, Andover Seminary, and Union Theological
Seminary) served as cautionary tales to the faculty at Fuller.

[20]Including men like
Wilbur Smith, Harold Lindsell, and Gleason Archer. [21]Ibid., 220-23, 224. Charles Woodbridge had left Fuller in November
1956, having already indicated that he was concerned over Fuller’s drift away
from orthodoxy. See also Rudolph Nelson, The Making and Unmaking of an
Evangelical Mind: The Case of Edward Carnell (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 1987), 104. In the midst of Lindsell’s and Archer’s departure,
another significant change occurred. The statement in the school’s catalog
that required the faculty to sign the statement of faith without mental
reservation was removed from the 1964-65 version. Later, in December of
1967, Daniel Fuller, in an address at a meeting of ETS in Toronto, argued for
two kinds of Scripture: revelational and non-revelational (see Daniel Fuller,
“Benjamin B. Warfield’s View of Faith and History: A Critique in the Light of
the New Testament,” Bulletin of the Evangelical Theological Society11
(1968): 75-83). According to Lindsell, Fuller’s point was plain:
“revelational scripture is wholly without error; nonrevelational Scripture is
not” (Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible, 113). In 1971,
Fuller Seminary would adopt a new statement of faith in accord with the position
Daniel Fuller articulated in Toronto (Allison, Historical Theology, 116).
Whereas the former statement declared the Bible was “free from error in whole or
in part,” the new statement only affirmed the Bible as an infallible rule in
faith and practice (Lindsell, The Battle for the Bible, 116). To
Lindsell, the implications of the new statement were unmistakable: Fuller
Seminary now clearly advocated partial inerrancy. Lindsell would assert
this conviction and provide even more evidence of Fuller’s departure from
inerrancy in a later work. See Harold Lindsell, The Bible in the
Balance (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1979), 183-243. [22]Approval like that
of Stanley Gundry who agreed with Lindsell’s argument that the abandonment of
inerrancy usually led to an institutions departure from Christian orthodoxy over
time. See Stanley N. Gundry, “Evangelical Theology: Where Should We Be Going?”
inQuo Vadis, Evangelicalism? ed. Andreas Köstenberger (Wheaton, IL:
Crossway, 2007), 75-77. In a recent historical assessment of
the debate, Barry Hankins designated The Battle for the Bible as a
“bellwether call for the return to biblical inerrancy.” Barry Hankins,Evangelicalism
and Fundamentalism: A Documentary Reader (New York: New York University
Press, 2008), 20.

[23]Donald W. Dayton,
“‘The Battle for the Bible’: Renewing the Inerrancy Debate,” The Christian
Century, November 10, 1976, 976-80. In a brief book review, Donald W.
Shriver, Jr., of Union Theological Seminary in New York, concluded, “Here is a
poorly researched, poorly reasoned, and poorly targeted book about the richest
subject in the world!” Donald W. Shriver, Jr., “Review: The Battle for the
Bible,” Interpretation 32, no. 2 (1978): 214-18. [24]John D. Hannah,
ed., Inerrancy and the Church (Chicago: Moody, 1984), vii-viii.

[25]I refer here to
Jack Rogers and Donald McKim’s book, The Authority and Interpretation of the
Bible: An Historical Approach (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979).